DMS Chapter 1

  Flinx woke up from the noises that entered his ears, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a bunch of people whom he didn’t recognize. The first thing that came into his mind was not the normal thing that a person would think of when they woke up somewhere they didn’t know like “Did somebody kidnap me?” or “Did I party too hard that now I’m in a place I don’t recognize because I was drunk?”, things like that.

  The first thing that came into his mind was, “Oh my god, I transmigrated!”

  Flinx was an avid internet novel reader, and since Isekai novels and anime had been all the rage lately, that was the majority of novels and animes that he had been consuming. He didn’t mind since he loved the genre.

  Flinx remembered when he was younger, a cousin introduced him to the books of L.E. Modesitt Jr., and one of the author’s series was the Spellsong Cycle Series. The first book, The Soprano Sorceress, was the book that his cousin Jordan brought, and when he read it, he fell in love with fantasy.

  It was an isekai novel when “transmigrated to another world” wasn’t known as isekai yet, according to his older cousin. The protagonist, who was an older woman, was a soprano teacher at a university and was transported to another world where magic was governed by one's talent and technical knowledge of music.

  After reading that novel series, he researched some more authors who had the same sort of style, and he found Barbara Hambly. Flinx found Ms. Hambly’s command of the English Language utterly exquisite. The way she formed her words was sheer poetry to him, and that made him want to be an author like her. Her Darwath Trilogy was something Flinx was looking for, and the fact that the protagonist was a manly mechanic who became the mage and a nerdy woman librarian who became the warrior was unexpected.

  Ever since then, Flinx consumed thousands upon thousands of fantasy and science fiction books. Then the advent of internet novels arrived, and he consumed thousands upon thousands of web novels as well.

  Unfortunately, Flinx's life took a turn for the worse. During his high school graduation, his parents died in a car accident on the way to the graduation site.

  Flinx was surprised to learn after he had settled his parents’ funeral that his father owed a huge debt. It was a good thing that he was a single child, so no one aside from him suffered from the downturn his life had taken.

  The creditors took his parents’ house, so he had to let go of his books since he could not afford to keep them. That particular blow hurt him so much, almost equal to the hurt that he suffered when his parents died.

  That meant that he had to get a job real quick. He needed funds quickly to put a roof over his head, and thankfully, his parents’ house and their leftover savings were enough to pay for all the debt, so the only thing that he needed to do was work to survive.

  Flinx found a small apartment and worked at one of the most depressing jobs that a person could have. The call center industry. He was a technical support representative receiving shouts from ignorant people about why their computers were not working when the only thing they had to do was plug their computers into the wall outlet. His only remaining consolation was his love for fantasy and science fiction novels, and his smartphone was fully capable of supporting his addiction.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Regarding relationships, he did have a girlfriend in high school, but she broke up with him during graduation since she planned to go somewhere. She was accepted into a prestigious university, so it was understandable that she would choose to go to college there. Miranda admitted that she felt guilty for leaving him, especially since Flinx suddenly became an orphan and destitute at that time, but they couldn’t really hold on to the relationship because even her family was moving. The only thing left for her in the city they grew up in was him, and they both decided to just sever that tie completely since a relationship founded in sadness and pity wouldn’t work.

  Flinx didn’t get any more chances to form any new relationships in his workplace since all the people there were much older than him, and they all looked severely depressed and bitter. He remembered when he introduced himself, all of his teammates had the same question. Where did your weird name come from? He noticed that they weren’t truly interested in knowing, so he just gave a brief, generic answer, and they all moved on.

  Flinx’s father was also a reader, and he liked science fiction. It was even a little weird that his father didn’t introduce him to the world of fantasy and sci-fi. His father’s favorite author was Alan Dean Foster, and his father loved Foster’s Flinx and Pip book series. He loved the books so much that he named his firstborn son after the protagonist of the series.

  He read the books by Alan Dean Foster as well, when he got used to reading fantasy and science fiction novels, and Flinx must say that he loved them as well. The protagonist’s actual name was Philip Lynx, which was shortened to Flinx, and the character became a powerful psionic.

  A pity that he didn’t resemble the protagonist since the original Flinx, although he started as a small young man, grew into a very tall, handsome redhead with olive skin. Flinx the Second, as he called himself when comparing himself to Foster’s protagonist, had an average height of five feet and ten inches and had dark hair, but he liked his eyes since they were a vivid blue. He wasn’t particularly handsome, and the best description that he could receive was “average-looking”. At least he wasn’t obese, as most otakus were. He was now 22 years old with nothing to show for it but his high school diploma and his three years of experience in the call center industry.

  And now Flinx was here.

  Flinx thought again of where he was and looked around. He was in some sort of a cave, and even though a cave was supposed to be dark, it was bright enough to see the other people beside him. He was a little excited since he saw that the brightness came from glowing things that were floating near the walls.

  As an avid fantasy reader, he recognized them as some sort of mage lights. He was wearing his favorite t-shirt and boxer shorts, and he was thankful for that because some of the others were totally naked.

  Flinx remembered that he used to sleep nude as well but when the owner of the dingy apartment where he was staying suddenly entered his apartment while he was sleeping, he changed his habit of sleeping naked to wearing at least a t-shirt and his boxer shorts to make sure that he was decent if for some reason he needed to leave the apartment quickly or meet the owner again.

  Most of the women kept crying and shouting. The men kept on with their blustering, shouting their demands for explanation. On a quick count, Flinx saw that there were ten of them in the group and they were inside some sort of circle that was drawn on the ground but there were multiple groups of people in the cave and when he tried to count all the group, there were at least five or six or possibly more since he couldn’t see some of the groups since they were far from where he was at.